


Tangential

by BasicCourtesy



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 05, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Before, Character Development, Episode: s04e15 Planet of the Dead, F/M, Panic Attack, Post-Season/Series 04, aftermath of human experimentation, eventually, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:06:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22913689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicCourtesy/pseuds/BasicCourtesy
Summary: Lee doesn't know what's happening. Or where she is. Or even really what she is. But the traveling is cool and she's learning so much about the universe. The only way it would be better is if her traveling partner didn't scare the bejeezus out of her.The Tenth Doctor picks up a girl after being forced to leave behind Donna. Too bad he is not in the right emotional state to pick up someone as emotionally needy as Lee.
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Eleventh Doctor/Original Female Character(s), Tenth Doctor & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t the pain that woke her up. The pervasive ache that ate at her bones had settled into her entire being, it became part of who she was. It had been so long since she existed separate from the twisting agony of her body breaking down and rebuilding, being awake or asleep no longer made a difference to her.

But something woke Lee up, even if she couldn’t immediately identify what.

Lee laid in silence until she felt the irregular rattling of the station around her. She stood and wandered to the door of her cell.

In the entirety of her semi-forced stay on this station, irregular was not a word that could be used to describe it. Lee would have called them scheduled: her meals coming to her every 8:15 and 5:30, her walks around the complex always 45 minutes before her evening gene therapy, her classes never lingered and made sure she hit her marks in dexterity and comprehension, and her ‘appointments’ a strict 13 hours apart- long enough for the experiments to settle but for her to heal. She could call them manipulative: they made sure to keep her informed of her state of health, not enough to know what they were doing to her but enough to know that by then it would take a miracle for her to survive without them. She definitely called them ruthless: after all, she hadn’t been very old when they first _acquired_ her. She could and had called them efficient, and cruel, and merciless, and strict.

She had been stuck in this physically pristine space station for longer than she could admit to herself and she knew the people and space better than she knew her own genetic make-up, and never before had she been woken up in the middle of the night to surprise tremors.

Lee took a moment to look around her ‘room.’ She knew she could get out and solve the mystery of the unexpected tremors, but did she really want to? If she couldn’t get back to sleep, she had the books assigned that day to test her comprehension. If those didn’t interest her, she had a variety of puzzles to solve that tested her problem solving or the blank papers that were supposed to be used to measure her memory retention. And even if none of those interested her, Lee could pick up the adjustable weights littering the room and work out.

She giggled at herself before turning her back on the room. Who was she kidding? She may have resigned herself to being stuck in that damned station, but Lee could never deny her insatiable curiosity.

Lee leaned forward to look at the panel next to her door and tapped in the most recent code to release the locks. They changed daily, mostly because it was too easy for her to discover the passcodes, but the people in charge never felt that her periodic escapes were enough of a risk to change their security to something harder to crack than a 6-digit passcode. After-all, as far as she knew, if she completely escaped, she’d die anyway.

When the door opened, the sound of alarms became immediately apparent. The corridor was designed as sleeping quarters for the various experiments, and while Lee was the only cognizant one still around, the sound-proofing of the rooms was excellent. The scientists and security didn’t want anything to interfere with their work and introducing loud, sudden sounds could act as irritating variables on their subjects. So, when Lee opened her door, she was surprised at the low, steady droning noise reverberating across the metal walls.

“Attention all personnel: there is an intruder on Deck 3. Repeat, there is an intruder on Deck 3. Method of boarding is unknown. Possible number of assailants is unknown. Secure all research and report to immediate superior.” Lee listened to the measured, familiar voice command the workers of the space station before discarding it as irrelevant to herself and kept walking.

The at the end of the hallway, Lee was presented with multiple directions to venture down, but the continuous vibrations had ceased sometime in her brief walk and she had no idea of the direction she should go.

So Lee followed her gut and took the turn toward the cafeteria.

She was a growing, genetically unstable girl. She needed her sustenance. The walk to the dining hall was swift and sure, the alarm settling into soothing background noise in the back of her mind. When Lee arrived, the room was empty. Trays left haphazardly but firmly on tables as evidence of their quick but unafraid response to surprise intruder. The food was standard fare for a space station. Neither extravagant nor too bland; the entrees were simple meats, side dishes were some type of fruit or veg, and dessert was offered in a sealed package. The food was designed to keep morale and energy up without overly extending the staff and budget, but for the past several years Lee had only eaten what amounted to calorie shakes and she found herself delighted by the foods before her.

Some time was lost to Lee in the process of eating the still warm food left in the cafeteria. The lightly seasoned chicken breasts had her mouth watering in response to the unfamiliar flavors. The buttered potatoes kept her attention for longer than her stomach could handle. At the first bite of the cinnamon-flavored biscuit, Lee grabbed every package she could find and stuffed them in the loose pockets of her cotton pants.

By the time her stomach was full and every movement left her feeling vaguely nauseous, the station alarms had stopped droning and switched to a more urgent trilling. Lee did not know what had changed, there may well have been an announcement while she was in her food-trance, but her curiosity re-emerged with the satiation of her hunger.

The dining hall was clearly not where the action was, but maybe the labs were.

Lee retraced her steps back to the junction leading from the cells to the rest of the station and instead of the left to the cafeteria made way to the labs. She couldn’t help but find the journey to the labs much more concerning than the one to the dining hall. Detritus littered the corridors and papers were shoved into corners where they had been crumpled by people rushing by. Usually, Lee couldn’t walk a dozen feet in either direction without running into someone in charge of her, but it had been at least 30 minutes and she hadn’t seen anyone.

The entire walk was strange to Lee, alone in movement for the first time in years. And when she got to the lab, the stillness was eerie. The space station was designed for science. There were minimal weapons and security was provided as was necessary for the type of projects being completed. Every bit of the insane budget provided was funneled into the labs, and never before had Lee seen it empty.

Lee looked around the space, glancing at and then away from the glass shattered across the floor, before walking to the few papers left behind. They weren’t anything that really helped her, every paper was either information she already knew or so specific to whatever project they were separated from that she could not make sense of them.

“Attention all personnel remaining on board: evacuation protocol is underway. Any persons remaining are expected to terminate all evidence of their work and proceed to the transport pods. Intruder has been identified and is not to be confronted. If you run into the intruder, go the other way,” a new announcement rang through the room and Lee heard a scuttling noise from under a desk in response. The voice had changed, the woman who typically read the schedule updates and announcements had been replaced by a rushed sounding man.

Shadows attempted to hide the animal cowering under the desk when Lee bent over to investigate the sound. A small, almost-rat sat there trembling, its fur ruffled and its scales dull. Lee held out her hand toward it and whispered, “It’s ok, sweetheart, I got you.”

Lee wasn’t very practiced in soothing scared animals, or literally anything, but she must have been doing something right because, after a few seconds, the almost-rat made several hesitant hops toward her.

“Shhhhhh. It’s ok,” it made a startled croon when she scooped it into the palm of her hand but settled quickly. Lee stared at the small lab experiment in her hand, she didn’t recognize what species it was, she didn’t even know if it was natural or not, but she saw herself in its resigned reaction to fear. There wasn’t much she could do for herself, but she could at least find that almost-rat a safer place to hide than a destroyed and abandoned lab.

She had just opened a pack of her squirreled biscuits for the almost-rat to chew on in her pocket when the space station rattled once again before settling finally into passive silence. Whatever had been going on at the station seemed to be dying down, though the results of the uproar remained to be seen. As she started to scoot herself back, she caught the faint glow of a test tube that had been wedged behind the desk.

Lee pried the tube out and stared. In her hand was a vial of stardust. It glimmered gold with every minute shake of her hand and again she found pieces of herself in it. She recognized that whatever was in that vial was in her too. It used to burn when injected and always left her feeling numb and unsteady for days. Days where that mystery-substance was part of the procedure that turned her into a mystery-being were agonizing and ugly. But the stars in that vial were beautiful. And as she glowed in response, she felt a bit beautiful too.

She slipped it into her pocket and left the laboratory. There was only one other major destination to explore: the bridge.

The corridors were just as creepily empty but with company in her pockets, Lee felt steadier in step. She approached the slightly cracked door to the bridge and heard yelling.

“-nology isn’t possible with what humans should know. Ever,” a man’s voice came through clearly. His voice was baffled and degrading at the same time. “This level of gene manipulation to present time and mental sensitivities should not be possible.”

“Just because you think it is impossible does not mean that it is,” Lee did recognize the second voice. He was the head honcho, the big cheese, the lead scientist. She wasn’t sure what exactly the end goal of the experimentation station was but if how the lead scientist dressed was any indication, it was very lucrative.

“You don’t understand, it’s not because I’m not smart enough to understand. I’m smarter than everyone in this station. I make you look like a gibbering idiot,” the first voice, the one she didn’t recognize snapped. “It is objectively impossible for these experiments to work. Well unless you had-“

The voice interrupted itself with a series of increasingly enthusiastic mumbles. Lee leaned in to peer through the open doorway. Where there were typically more than two dozen people on the bridge to operate a space station of that size, only two people remained. As the lead scientist, and with a personality that demanded overbearing levels of oversight, Dr. Nelson was not of interest to Lee. The other man in the room was interesting in the contrasts between his looks and Lee’s expectations. Every person she had met that talked like he did, a mixture of confidence and derision, wore lab coats or had guns, but this man had neither. Sure, he wore a coat and suit, but far from the cold white, the brown overcoat opened his demeanor despite the hostility of his tone. His hair was large and free without being pulled back to fit the strict safety regulations of the scientists of the station and his shoes, while closed-toed, were not the professional loafers of the type of people who worked there. He had the brains of a scientist but not the looks of one.

“It would take a large amount of energy from a source in constant fluctuation with time to get these results,” the not-scientist scientist finally said. “But all those are gone. What could you possibly be using?”

“You don’t need to know. Our experiments are going to help humanity, and I don’t see how telling you anything works in my favor.”

“Because it's dangerous! The only particles that can produce these results kill humans. And you’ve been injecting them into innocent people!” Something dark had entered the stranger’s voice, a darkness Lee was familiar with and caused her to draw into herself.

“Please, as if someone like you knows what we are doing here,” Dr. Nelson sounded confident in his words, as if the evacuation of the station was but a minor inconvenience.

“Sure, how would someone like me know what energy source you are using to advance these experiments? How would I know that they are clear when inert but glow gold when exposed to movement? How would I know that when forcibly introduced to a human’s system they leave a burning sensation?”

Dr. Nelson blinked and seemed to take a moment to recollect himself but the stranger continued before the doctor could speak, “Huon particles are dangerous and you’ve been using them without fully understanding what they are. I’ve disposed of all the ones I could find in your laboratories but my scans indicate that there are still some aboard. Where are they?”

Lee pulled the hand that had unconsciously clenched around the vial out of her pocket and then stepped forward, “Um, I think you might be talking about this?”

Both men turned to look at her, Dr. Nelson with the dismissive anger he always had on his face when he saw her outside of her restraints in the lab and the stranger with clear surprise. The stares lasted for only a few seconds before both men slid their eyes to the vial in her hand.

“Oh! Molto bene!” The stranger made to rush over to grab the vial from her but Lee flinched back at the sudden movement and cradled the stardust to her chest. The stranger paused and reconsidered at her flinch but gave a slight flinch himself as both Lee and the vial began to gently glow.

“Another one? How many people did you endanger?!” The stranger whirled his attention back to Dr. Nelson. “Never again. You are going to stop this and shut the entire project down.”

Dr. Nelson snorted, “I am not going to abandon my life’s work because some nobody told me to.”

“Oh, I’m not going to just tell you. I’m going to make you.” Lee felt something shiver down her spine at the stranger’s words. “This station is officially decommissioned, starting right now. And you are going to let that girl go.”

“No. No it is not and no I will not. The investors of the work we are doing here expect results and they will get them. And I’m not going to lose our most valuable product.”

“Product? She’s a human being!” Like all the times he had spoken before, the tone the stranger used frightened Lee, but the words were something she hadn’t heard since she was taken from her home.

“Well, I that’s not quite true anymore, is it?” Dr. Nelson smiled with his teeth but not his eyes. “And for someone so self-righteous, you seem to care very little if she dies.”

“What do you mean? Of course I care if she dies!”

“Well, it’s as you said. Those particles are awfully dangerous, and the little lily there has been exposed to more than most,” Dr. Nelson said.

“Nice try, but if she had been exposed to enough Huon particles to kill her, she wouldn’t be walking now. If she is no longer exposed to the particles, then they should bleed off,” the stranger started confidently but seemed to realize he was missing something.

“That may be accurate for some cases related to Huon particles, but for her. After all, she has been injected with them on a daily basis for the past 4 years. They keep her stable. They keep her alive. Now tell me, sir, do you care more for her life or for her freedom?”

Lee felt the fury rising in the room, wafts of anger circling the man. “Well, that is unfortunate, for you. I was going to allow you the chance to make the right choice. But that was before I fully understood the extent of this operation and your commitment to being a terrible person. Now, there is no choice.”

The man moved toward the center console of the bridge and tapped a few buttons. “You see, you were going to have the option to abandon your work or turn yourself in, but seeing as how I just ejected all escape pod and initiated your outbreak protocols, I don’t really see many choices for you.”

The threats continued to pour out of the stranger’s mouth as he walked once again towards the doorway and Lee, “The Shadow Proclamation have been informed of your actions here. A group your _investors_ have no sway over. All the research on this station will be purged and you’ll be arrested.”

Dr. Nelson had paled dramatically the more the stranger spoke but gathered himself to spit one last line at the stranger’s back, “I may be in jail, but the little lily will be dead.”

“Constant exposure to Huon particles is all she needs to live, right?” The stranger didn’t pause for the answer he seemed to already know. “Good thing my ship is a constant source of them then.”

The stranger turned to Lee and smiled, though, like Dr. Nelson’s smile, it didn’t quite reach his eyes, “Come on then. You don’t have to stay here any longer.”

He urged Lee back into the corridor with a soft push to her back and then hurried forward, not pausing to check if Lee was following or not. Lee looked back at Dr. Nelson but he was no longer looking at her, his eyes were trained on the screen in front of him as he tried to stop the quarantine process happening throughout the station. Video showed that in the laboratories, which held no signs of life, a controlled burn was spreading. Lee turned around and followed the distant form of the strange man.

Lee caught up to him quickly and tried to consider her options while on the move. She didn’t have many. She could stay on the space station and be brought in by what she assumed was the space police and then slowly die without access to the mysterious Huon particles the stranger and Dr. Nelson were talking about. Or she could follow the stranger and possibly be murdered. In only one of the options was dying only a possibility instead of a surety.

Lee had almost decided to follow the stranger regardless of the blaring questions surrounding him when he stopped in front of a bright blue door that Lee had never seen before. The door seemed to be connected to some sort of closet but when warm light poured out of the open door and the stranger walked farther in than should have been possible for a closet of that size, Lee hesitated.

The stranger’s head popped out of the doorway when Lee didn’t follow after a few seconds, “Well, are you coming?”

“If I follow you, I really won’t die? You can help me?”

“I said I would so I will. You can trust me,” the stranger said. Lee didn’t know much about trust, but she did know about hope, and that’s what the stranger was really offering her. Lee took a step towards him but still hesitated.

“I don’t even know your name. You are probably luring me into this box to murder me.”

“Several things. One: this isn’t a box, it’s my spaceship. You’ll understand more when you come in. Two: I’m not going to murder you because three: I’m the Doctor. Nice to meet you,” the apparent doctor smiled at Lee.

“None of what you said makes sense. No engine capable of space flight can fit inside a container that size. And being a doctor does not inspire a lot of confidence. Says me: the human experiment.”

“I’m not _a_ doctor. I’m _the_ Doctor. It’s my name. And she’s a special ship called the TARDIS but you won’t understand why she’s special until you try trusting me. That’s all I’m asking. For you to just try.”

Lee stared at the man. His tone was impatient and she still felt that being any type of doctor was a mark against him, but his eyes were pleading with her. As far as Lee could tell, he very sincerely wanted her to live.

“Ok. I will trust you, for now.” Lee took several blind steps into the apparent spaceship, her eyes never leaving the Doctor’s.

“Well, that wasn’t so hard little… Lily? Is that what your name is?” The Doctor finally thought to ask for Lee’s name.

“No. That’s just what they called me. My name is Galilee. Galilee Bowen. Nice to meet you, Doctor.”


	2. Poked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lee learns about the TARDIS and a life of experimentation has it's drawbacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEWARE: description of a panic attack

The Doctor seemed to be waiting for something from her, an expectant silence quickly became noticeably awkward as Lee stood there, staring back at him.

“Ummm, thanks for bringing me on-board? I promise not to get in your way, I’m _really_ good at being unobtrusive,” Lee assured the Doctor. People liked to be appreciated, right? To know their decisions were the correct ones?

He sighed and almost visibly dismissed her. The Doctor turned and began fiddling with the glowing pillar directly across from the entranceway, pushing buttons and flicking switches in quick sequences. He had just pulled a lever when the rhythmic sound of wheezing airflow echoed throughout the space.

Lee tore her eyes from the unhesitant dance the Doctor was performing and swung her eyes around the spaceship to find the source of the sound.

“Whoa, this place is way more spacious than it looks.” Lee heard a derisive sounding mumble from the Doctor but continued without pause, “I was expecting it to have more space on the inside to accommodate both passengers and an engine capable of space flight but this is crazy.”

She quickly paced from wall to wall of the TARDIS, attempting to calculate the inner dimensions and the energy requirements to not only fold a larger space into the confines of a small blue box but to also travel with it. Her difficulties were immediately multiplied when she caught sight if a hallway breaking off from the control room and leading deeper into the ship. There was no telling just how big the TARDIS was. Humans could, at a greatly inefficient energy cost, fold a larger space into a slightly smaller one, but the space needed to remain stationary or it was likely to explode (along with everything around it). Lee didn’t think even the most advanced company or most intelligent human could fold that much inside in that little outside.

Behind her, the Doctor abandoned the control console to stare at Lee in bemusement.

“This place is like a Sci-fi novel. Bigger on the inside to an extraordinary degree. It’s like this place is begging to create a wormhole and carry an AI that will turn evil and try to kill us. It probably does something ridiculous like time travel.”

Lee’s mumbles continued, the Doctor silent behind her with an amused smirk on his face, “Not that I meant to call your ship ridiculous, but I mean- ships like this don’t exist outside books. Right?”

Lee couldn’t decide if she was thrilled or terrified as she tried to bend her mind around the mind-breaking ship and its intimidating pilot.

She mumbled herself out, no more theories available to her without learning more information and silence reasserted itself. The Doctor and Lee stared at each other for a befuddled moment before the Doctor clapped his hands together.

“Ok then. I’ll give you the tour- all the fun facts and a bit of directions, even though that makes things a bit less fun,” the Doctor said rapidly. He moved toward Lee and ushered her in the direction of the hallway she had spied before. “Like you and everyone else have noticed, the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. Of course, she is, she also travels in time and space. But that isn’t what we are going to concentrate on at the moment. What concerns you for the next bit is the medbay.”

Lee twitched at his words. She was very used to medbays, and he did call himself the Doctor, but had hoped that this place would be different. The routine was slightly comforting in its familiarity, since stepping into the TARDIS and away from all she had known for the past several years (and her whole life if she was being honest) Lee had been feeling off-balance. She couldn’t even begin to try to think about the scientific implications of time travel yet. If tests and experiments would help her feel any comfort in the situation, she would go along with the Doctor—and it wasn’t like she had much of a choice.

Lee had thought that she knew her way around a spaceship, she thought space stations were her ( _pardon her language_ ) bitch, but it only took three turns on the TARDIS before she felt hopelessly lost. The Doctor, on the other hand, moved like he could find where he was going with his eyes closed, like he knew every possible inch of the miracle ship.

Following someone more confident than she was, someone sure of their purpose in every step, was something that Lee knew. The TARDIS and the world outside the AO-1 may have been completely unfamiliar, but with her every step that shadowed the Doctor’s, she felt she knew what to expect. And she wasn’t sure that she liked it.

Lee felt justified in her comparison when the duo reached the medbay, which was almost exactly like all the others she had been in before. White, technologically advanced, and roomy.

“Well, here I am again. Now that I’ve vacated the AO-1, I should let everyone know my permanent address is ‘the nearest medbay,’” Lee began to speak before she had realized. “Of course, people might have trouble differentiating one medbay from the other. You couldn’t even do anything about that smell-”

Lee cut herself off, just realizing that the pervasive smell of antiseptics and blood was missing from the room. In fact, the room smelled subtly like clean sheets and something floral. Lee concentrated on the smell, the difference from the AO-1 grounding her in her new present. The TARDIS medbay wasn’t quite like any she had been in before and maybe the Doctor could be different from the others that had ‘tested’ her.

“Hop up on the bed—it will scan your vitals,” the Doctor said, his back was turned to Lee and he was already rummaging through a drawer she could not see into. “I’m going to take a blood sample, and while that runs, we will put you through some more comprehensive tests.”

Lee took her seat on the bed-scanner, knowing when she was expected to following orders efficiently. As soon as she was settled, the Doctor gestured for her to hold out her arm for a blood sample.

“What type of tests did they have you doing? I imagine something more than simple biometric scans—they wouldn’t reveal much about the changes your body is going through,” the Doctor spoke through the quick pinch in Lee’s arm and the filling of the vial with her blood. He did pause briefly to shake the bottle and look more closely when it glowed softly in response.

“Uhm, they couldn’t test directly for what I was supposed to have gained, but, uhm, they would watch my scans—uh, brain and other biometrics—while testing me on things I hadn’t learned,” Lee tried to explain the tests as vaguely as she could. She didn’t like thinking about them even as she had taken them, and she definitely didn’t like their method of encouraging her desperation to have the right answer to questions she couldn’t possibly know.

“Ah. I can guess what they were looking for,” The Doctor said. He spun to a small machine near them and placed the vial of her blood within, then he turned back to Lee. “Go on. Lay down.”

Lee hesitate but did so, listening as the Doctor continued, “Testing you on concepts and facts that you couldn’t know would exhibit a two-fold response. Either your body went through a stress-response which would excite the Huon particles infused in your system and show how well your body was adapting. Or you would miraculously know the answer and a more psychically-minded phase of testing would have to be completed.”

The Doctor turned on the scanners connected to the bed, a rhythmic sequence of a whir and soft thump radiated from under Lee. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the Doctor’s voice and the smell of the TARDIS medbay.

“I suppose I should start asking you questions then. Don’t get them wrong.”

The first questions were easy, not for her to answer but for her to accept she didn’t know but before long the Doctor delved into more dangerous territory.

“At what rate are your cells changing to accommodate the influx of Huon and Arton particles? And how long will it take for your body to completely stabilize?” the Doctor asked.

The vibrations of the bed beneath her were beginning to be distracting, the constant _whir-thump_ of the scans pulling her attention. She didn’t know the answer and she wouldn’t unless she concentrated and thought it through.

“Come on, tell me what you think,” he said, his focus on the readouts running across the screen in front of him.

Lee tried to think. What did she know about the experiments she had been through?

_Whir-thump._

She didn’t know much. Her heartbeat was louder than her thought process. She just needed to answer this question and she would be that much closer to being done.

_Whir-thump._

She didn’t know the answer. How could she not know the answer? It was all about her.

_Whir-thump._

The noise was so loud. The whining of the machine and the thump of her heartbeat combined until it was all that existed. She was never going to be done with the tests.

Her breathing was beginning to stutter. She couldn’t think like that. She didn’t even know if she could exist like that.

_Whir-thump._

The world had narrowed down to the machine and her heartbeat. To her mind as it struggled to come up with an answer and to her lungs as they struggled to come up with air.

_Whir-thump._

Something reached into the void that was encircling her and softly touched her shoulder. The flinch that ran through Lee’s body pushed her off the side of the bed she was laying on, the impact of the floor forcing a gasp of air out of her lungs.

The sound was gone, and in its place was the gasping breaths of Lee and the soft voice of the Doctor.

“You were beginning to glow. I didn’t realize what was happening until then, I should have been paying more attention.” Lee stared at him, hardly comprehending his words.

“I think we are done with the tests for a while. How about we find your room?” He slowly reached out a hand to help Lee rise to her feet and said, “This way.”

Lee felt she didn’t have time to blink before she and the Doctor stood in front of a plain door, identical to all the others along the hallway.

The Doctor must have been talking the entire walk to what must have been Lee’s room because his hand was mid-gesture toward the door and his voice had fallen into a monologue-like rhythm for the sparse words Lee caught.

“…say it feels like home, the TARDIS has a physic link that decorates your room…,” Lee tried to concentrate on his words, any other time she would have found the idea of a telepathic ship fascinating but the hall lights were blinding and his voice was becoming shrill to her ears.

“Some old companions found the TARDIS in their heads to be an invasion of privacy so unless there is an emergency or until you are more comfortable the link stays shallow and only recent…”

Lee shut her eyes and concentrated for a moment on trying not to throw up. She needed a moment to think, just one moment and she thought she could pull herself together.

Movement grabbed her attention, the Doctor was opening the door, still speaking as he looked at her face, “You probably need a moment, stay here until you feel rested and calm. We can talk more when you are ready.”

Lee froze until he ushered her in the room and closed the door behind her.

Her breath punched out of her chest as she saw her room. She was back in her cell, though this time she didn’t have the books or small diversions she had squirreled away over the years to distract her.

She thought she had left behind the thin mattress with the metal bedframe and starched white sheets. She didn’t think she would ever have to see the unpainted metal walls of the AO-1 again.

The world started to blur and she knew the exact number of steps she had to take to sink into the sturdy chair welded in front of the desk in the corner.

Oh god, she couldn’t breathe. Her skin started to glow lightly; the glow reflected softly back at her from the metal around her.

A momentary distraction burrowed into her mind. She knew that cell intimately, every shadow and every surface—there was unfamiliar light coming from a new room.

Lee stumbled to her feet and bolted through the new door. Her breath came slightly easier in the new bathroom, and as she pushed her sweaty forehead into the grouted tile below her she wondered if she was made for the purpose of being locked in that room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot of editing or even rereading done. But I hoped you liked it.

**Author's Note:**

> Like most of my stories, the updates will be sporadic and unreliable. I hope you enjoy it in the method it is intended- as fun and full of errors (like life).


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